Notable Byway Attractions en Route to Oregon
by Lyrastar
Summary: Denny/Alan slash started before 4x16 came along and made some of the details no longer compliant.


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**NOTABLE BYWAY ATTRACTIONS ALONG THE SCENIC ROUTE TO OREGON**

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"Shirley, have you seen Denny?" Alan breezed his head into her office.

"Thirty years ago, and it's taken me that long to expunge the psychic horror of it. No thanks for reminding me." Shirley replied without looking up from her calculator.

Stock-still now, Alan waited, a quizzical expression upon his face.

Finally she looked up as he knew she would. She removed her glasses and offered a rueful not-smile. "I'm sorry. That was thoughtless, rude and unprovoked. To answer your question: No, I have not seen Denny recently."

It was rude and uncalled for--not a problem in itself as that was something that was very near the top of Alan's playlist of favorites, but it was unlike Shirley in the extreme. Alan wondered-- and not for the first time--if Paul's leaving had affected her…differently than it had the other partners. Everyone needed someone, and people have been known to find love in the oddest places.

And Crane, Poole and Schmidt was certainly the oddest of places.

Then he considered her tired face, make-up carelessly applied, nails untended and suit worn yesterday as well as today, and he dismissed that as being the issue: If unhappy encounters with Ivan Tiggs and Denny Crane couldn't pull the _quoi_ out of her _je ne sais_, certainly the loss of a small soul like Paul never would.

"It's quite all right." Alan stepped over her office threshold, smoothing the already perfect lie of his suit breast with one palm. "One or two quick sexual favors, and we'll call the whole thing even."

She barely reacted: not a gleam of the eye, not a quirk of the mouth, not a twitch of the nose, not a shake of the head.

Alan tried again. "I meant, of course, _I_ would favor _you_..."

Still nothing. In fact, she cast her gaze away. That was bad. Shirley was not the looking away type.

Perhaps there was one man left in her life large enough to stir up this kind of Schmidt. Apples don't fall far from the tree.

Alan had a flash. "How is your father?"

"Dying," she said.

But at least she did look up. She met his eyes evenly. If she was surprised or impressed by his acumen, apparently, she was not going to condescend to let him see it. He'd caught her once with her britches down already, and apparently that was his allotment for this decade. He regretted he hadn't put the opportunity to better use.

"Pneumonia," she continued. "They're giving him oxygen and IV antibiotics at the home, but it's not working. They asked me about transfer to a hospital for more aggressive care--including ventilator support--but I declined. With his mind how it is--or shall I say, how it isn't--it seems at best a travesty and at worst selfish and sadistic to force his lungs and body to accept life.

"They don't expect him to make it through the weekend."

"I am sorry," said Alan.

"Don't be. Everything that made him who he was has been dead for over a year."

Alan resisted the urge to check his watch. They were due at arraignment court, yes, but if he was ever in too great a hurry for a friend in need, Denny might as well shoot him (lethally, this time) and put them both out of their misery.

"I didn't mean so much about the body and lungs." Alan sauntered over to her sofa and took a seat with deliberate leisure. "I didn't mean for the death. We all die. It's only a matter of whether it is a more a less convenient time for those around us, and this doesn't seem like a particularly bad one.

"I meant about your loss. No matter how old one is, it is impossible to lose one's last parent and not feel like an orphan."

"No, I don't suppose it is."

Now, that was the Shirley half-smile he had become accustomed to. And the lines on her face seemed to ease.

"May we come?" he asked.

"Pardon me?"

"I presume you'll be going back to visit tonight. May we join you?"

"Oh." Again, atypically, Shirley seemed to flounder. "There's nothing to see. He's not aware. I usually just bring work. Still, I think there's something to be said for being there…." Her voice trailed off.

"Denny knew him, I believe?" Alan pressed.

Now Shirley laughed. "'Knew' would be one way of putting it. When we were involved, my father threatened to have Denny skinned, dismembered, processed, his body parts individually wrapped--starting with the one nearest and dearest to his heart, figuratively at least--tied up in string and mailed to Noirega if Denny so much as touched me."

"My, my," said Alan.

"After we ended it--"

Alan took that to mean after Shirley caught Denny with a pair of the Doublemint twins

"--they became friends of a sort. Hunting buddies. My father said that Denny was crack shot and tracker. Denny said he was buttering my father up to get him to tell campfire stories about me in the bathtub or bring baby pictures of me on a bearskin rug."

"Heh. So which was it?" Alan studied her face. She looked happier when she looked back, which Alan thought was a terrible shame.

"Some of both, I'm sure." Her gaze lost focus somewhere in the past.

"So, we may join you?" Alan interrupted her thoughts.

She peered at him. "You don't find something cruel about bringing Denny to the bedside of a man dying from the last complications of dementia?"

Alan stared her down. "What I would find cruel is to explain to Denny that one of his old friends is dying, but his Alzheimer's is pre-presumed to have made him unpresentable, and it is taken as a given that no one will care to go to say goodbye, pay respects or so much as be in the room."

Shirley nodded, point conceded. "I should be there by 6:30. My assistant has the address." She slid reading glasses back on and picked up a pencil, her attention ostensibly now focused upon her work.

"All right, then," he said and exited into the hall to resume his search for Denny.

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* * *

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"Denny!" He found him on the balcony with only a few minutes to spare. "We have a motion in front of Judge Saunders in fifteen minutes. What are you doing out here? It's nowhere near the end of the episode."

"I came out to clear my head."

"Ah, good. Then it should be quick work." Alan approached his chair and did an internal double-take. "Why do you have your hand down your pants in front of all of Boston's Back Bay?"

"They can't see, and you won't tell."

"Which does not address the greater question."

"That's the head that needs clearing. I can't work when I'm all…congested." Denny gestured with his non-masturbatory hand.

"I can offer you a Vick's Stick." From a breast pocket, Alan proffered a mentholated tube.

"Mm," Denny grunted. "The client--the archery instructor--she's gotten me all--"

"Yes, I see."

"--backlogged. I can't go into court and face her with a--"

"Log."

"It interferes with my thinking."

Wisely, Alan let that one pass.

Alan checked his watch again. "Really, Denny, we have to go--"

"I'm doing my best here, but you interrupted the moment. Now I have performance anxiety."

"I assure you, I'm a friendly audience, although I can't speak for the rest of the metro area." Alan laughed and gestured over the balcony rail to the shopping district below.

"You want to help?" Denny regarded him hopefully. "It would speed things up. If a picture is worth a thousand dirty words, a mouth is worth…"

Alan laughed again. "Although, that is one of my recurring fantasies, sadly, we are pressed for time. If you would kindly logroll yourself towards the exit--"

"You don't know what you're missing," Denny grumbled as he stood and zipped, securing his crane. "I haven't had sex in a week; when she blows it's going to be one for the record books." He said it loudly enough for Claire to hear as she passed by his office door.

"Perhaps I'll catch it on CNN." Hand on the small of Denny's back, Alan hustled him out into the hallway.

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* * *

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"We plead not guilty and ask for R.O. R." Denny made the announcement before Alan had even finished straightening up and buttoning his jacket.

"You can't plead! He hasn't even read the charges yet." Saunders voice quavered from the bench.

Now Alan spoke. "Yes, Your Honor. My colleague was just trying to save you some--"

"Jibber-jabber!"

"--jibber-jabber."

"Your client is a school teacher who intentionally shot a man with a bow and arrow! I am not going to send her home--or back to our children--to do it again." Saunders somehow managed to summon even more righteous sounding indignation than usual.

"Terrorist," Denny mumbled.

"Pardon?" Saunders blinked at him.

"The man she shot was a terrorist. The police were doing nothing. She should be given a medal. Let's end this jibber-jabber and go home. Denny Crane." Denny sat down.

"Is this true?" Saunders turned to the prosecutor.

"The victim has no convictions, and that's not--"

"That's not what I asked you!" Saunders banged his gavel in punctuation.

The prosecutor sighed. "He has been named as the primary suspect in an ongoing investigation of pipe bombings, but there have been no charges brought. In America, we are innocent until proven guilty, so..."

"Exactly! The defendant is R.O.R." The judge banged the gavel. "Next case."

The prosecutor slammed his folder closed with the mutter of a crisp expletive.

Alan ushered the client from the room.

"Denny Crane. Holy terror. Thank you. Denny Crane," Denny repeated as he smiled past the crowd of flashes and microphones.

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* * *

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"Dinner at Delmonico's?" Denny had been on a meat twice a day campaign for over a three months. He said it was part of a race to beat the mad cow.

Alan came around to the driver's side and slid behind the wheel of Denny's Boxster. "I told Shirley we'd visit with her and her father tonight. He's dying."

"Of Alzheimer's," Denny said.

"Pneumonia, I'm told, will be the official cause of death, but yes. I didn't think you knew."

"I know what I need to. Except when I don't. Then I have you." He patted Alan's thigh.

"You do," said Alan. He pulled out of the garage and turned the opposite way from home--or rib-eyes.

"He had the hots for me, you know." Denny put a thick cigar between his lips and sucked.

"Shirley's father?"

"Mm-hmm. He was jealous of me. Said he wanted to see me wrapped in cellophane and tied up. Some place wild and tropical where dark, hairy men go mad with jungle lust and all the normal rules are off."

"Cellophane wrap," Alan managed a _faux_ shudder. "Terrible stuff. Leads to infertility and yeast infections."

"Cock itch."

"Jock itch," Alan corrected.

"I meant what I said," said Denny placidly.

"You can't tell Shirley about her father, especially now with the--" With his cigar hand, Denny made swirls beside his ear. "It would break her heart."

"She's a woman of the world. I bet she knows." Alan peeled out of the garage driveway and down the street.

The ride back was quieter than the ride out had been.

"Do you still want that steak?" Alan asked.

"No," said Denny. "Let's just go home."

"Fine."

It was hard to tell if that was a bad sign or not.

Since they'd been living together, they'd abbreviated their balcony sessions more and more. Since Paul had left and they could no longer let smoke drift downwind to his open window and infuriate him, they had lost even more of their appeal.

Most nights they had at least one drink and flirted for a bit, which Alan assumed was Denny's way of misleading the masses into thinking they weren't doing anything gay. Some nights they went out to eat, but mostly these days they just headed home.

This didn't surprise Alan about himself. Of all the things he missed about being married, being settled into a mundane rut was probably number one. It did surprise him that Denny Crane had permitted himself to be so easily colored by another person's whims.

"Alan," Denny said at last. "Will you shoot me?"

Alan groaned out loud. "We've had this discussion numerous times. Once again, I most certainly will not."

"No, no," Denny hastened. "I don't mean that. Not while I'm alive. Will you shoot me after I'm dead? Out of a shotgun?"

Denny sounded quite like his old self, and Alan risked a side glance away from the road. Oh yes, Denny was waxing to his audience now.

"I don't think you'll fit," said Alan.

"There's a company that'll take your ashes and pack them into shotgun shells. Instead of having a three-volley salute, I could _be_ the three volley salute. Fired over my city. There's no one I'd like better to shoot me over Boston." Denny patted Alan's leg. "And you wouldn't even have to hit anything. No pressure."

Despite himself, Alan chuckled. "I'm sorry, but my answer stands. I just can't shoot you any which way you slice it. My clavicle has barely recovered from my last close encounter with a shotgun."

"Wuss," said Denny. "I'll get Shirley to shoot me. She's twice the man that you are."

"No doubt. But the timing on asking her might be a bit awkward right now, don't you think? What about Paul? He'd jump at the chance to shoot you?"

"Paul! Maybe twenty years ago when we were friends I might have let him shoot me, but now, no." Denny shook his head for emphasis. "No, it's either you, Shirley, Sigourney Weaver, or no one gets to shoot me at all. I'll wait for Shirley. It's not like I'm going any time soon."

"That's good to know," said Alan. He let his voice go dreamy. "Although the chance to meet Sigourney--"

"Oh, she is some woman." Denny all but growled. "Especially half naked and coved in alien slime. I've always had a thing for hot alien babes." He wiggled in his seat and tugged at his inseam. "Maybe it's a good thing I didn't get to clear today's logjam. Drive faster."

Alan chuckled and stepped on the gas.

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* * *

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By unspoken consensus, they bypassed the dining room and went straight up to the rooftop garden. It was a lot like the Crane Poole and Schmidt balcony but had the advantages of being tremendously more private with a bar that was much better stocked than the one at the office. Also, it was only one floor up from the bedroom suite with the California king, the extensive pornography collection, the champagne cooler, and the projection TV.

It was hard to put a date on when they'd moved in together. At some point it became evident that continually asking about sleepovers was a waste of perfectly good breath that could be used for smoking or sipping or just sitting in silence, so they finally stopped.

One day Denny had come to Alan in the office kitchenette. "Alan! Call the house. Therese is doing menus for the month. She wants to know what you like to eat for weekend lunches."

"Generally secretaries, nurses, librarians or flight attendants, but I've been trying to watch my cholesterol." Alan had answered fully cognizant of every eye in the room now darting between the two of them.

Denny however, had seemed as oblivious as ever. He was already on the march back toward his office.

"Denny," Alan had chased him down the hall. "We-- We never actually talked about this. About my moving in. With you." Alan blinked, as it appeared that there was something that wasn't getting across to Denny. "With us working together, if we're living together, it's inevitable that people are going to…know." Alan spread his palms.

Denny had looked confused. Or irritated. "My home. My office. You're in both because that's the way we want it. What's to discuss? What needs to be discussed is lunches. Call Therese, or find us some secretaries. Or both," Denny added as an apparent afterthought. He grinned and ambled off.

Alan poured them both generous scotches and unfurled into his patio chair to enjoy the evening air. "I invited Shirley to come over here on the night her father dies. Whenever that may be. It's an open invitation."

There was a pause. "Good thinking; funerals make women horny. I met my second wife at a funeral." Denny worked on cutting two cigars.

"Her husband's?" Alan asked. He knew the answer full well, but he enjoyed the way that Denny told the story.

"Of course not; that would be tacky." Denny straightened his puce and violet tie before warming the first cigar.

Alan chuckled. "There's a good chance that Paul will come back into town for that, you realize. He may come over here with her."

"Good." Denny repeated. "Everyone needs someone."

He stopped and seemed to reconsider as he handed Alan the first cigar. "You're not going to…piss on him or anything, are you?"

"Not at the dinner table, and certainly not while he's a guest in our home. As you say, that would be tacky."

"Now you've got it." Denny chuckled too.

"Say, do you think they're--" Denny made a crude tab Aà slot B gesture with his hands.

"I don't know. In a way, I rather hope so. Though if Shirley has given herself to Paul Lewiston before me, than there is no justice in the world."

"Of course there isn't," said Denny. "That's why we get rich having to make it ourselves--or at least we have fun trying." Denny plopped down with his own cigar and exhaled a cloud of smoke. For a while, there was only silence.

"Denny, would it bother you if they found out?"

"Hmm?" Denny looked over.

Alan continued. "I'd always assumed--knowing certain things about you--

"Like that I'm a Republican."

"--among others--that you'd want certain…intimate knowledge kept solely between us. But after that performance you gave today where you practically begged me to fellate you in front of not only the entire office but greater metropolitan Boston, I hardly know what to believe. And so I'm asking you for some guidance: what are your feelings about this?"

Denny set down the cigar and folded his hands. "Most people at the firm already assume we're lovers."

Alan spoke slowly. "I think that that's probably true. I was not, however, aware that you were aware of it."

"Most people aren't aware of most things I'm aware of."

"I know for a fact that that's true," said Alan dryly.

Denny waved his hand. "Let 'em think whatever the hell they want; they don't know what the hell to believe about me anyway. And this is more fun than confusing them by sticking a cigar in your ass. Ear." Denny corrected himself hastily.

"Eh--" Alan made and equivocal gesture.

Denny chuckled.

"Does it bother you?" Denny asked at last.

"Pardon?" Now it was Alan's turn to seem surprised.

"You're always on these liberal flag-waving grassroots save the organic gay whales soapboxes for other people. Now here you are living a soapbox, and you can't even go around--" Denny rolled a wrist around in the air

"Waving my fag." Alan suppressed a smirk.

"Does it bother you?"

Alan exhaled a puff of smoke. Although he probably would have given the same answer either way, to his surprise, he decided this one was honest.

"No, it does not. I rather enjoy having a secret no one else knows. Being a mystery wrapped up in an enigma. And as for my convictions and principles, I like to think that anything I believe in that strongly is all-encompassing enough to weather the dilution of a few actions of more persons than just myself. Otherwise, my friend, we are indeed in deep peril."

"Mmm."

"So, are you asking me to continue to keep this secret?" asked Alan.

"I'm not asking you to do a damn thing you don't want to."

"Except shoot you."

"Except shoot me," Denny conceded. "But not for a very long time."

Again, they smoked in the evening air.

"What I do object to most strenuously," Alan continued in a cheerier tone, "is your announcing your feelings of sexual deprivation to the office. The implication then, is that I have left you bereft. The perception that I would leave a partner unsatisfied could seriously damage my chances with Shirley, not to mention everyone else."

"Hey!" Denny jabbed the air. "You keep your mitts off the Schmidt!!"

"Massachusetts is a joint property state. If you're claiming her then, by rights, I--"

"Shirley was never part of the deal!"

"I don't believe this." Alan shook his head. "You let me play with all your other toys. You'll let me shoot you. You let me--" Alan did the peg and hole thing with his hands.

"I'm _pleading_ with you to shoot me," said Denny. "But you don't get Shirley."

"Unbelievable." Alan shook his head again. He put down his unfinished glass of scotch and stood. "Well, you may be young at heart, but I am not. I've had a hard day and am past ready for bed. Good night."

Denny drained his glass and stood. "I'll come with you."

"Huh." Alan humphed. "I supposed you have high hopes for that logjam of yours. And after telling me that _I'm_ Schmidt out of luck. Huh." He humphed again.

"I got candles," Denny baited him with a bedroom leer. "Vanilla."

"Oh no. Not candles. My bottom is still tingly from the last time." Alan tried to sound coy, but his nipples were already tingly too, and they both knew that he was hooked.

"Where?" said Denny. He ambled over, very close, and laid his hand on Alan's backside. "Here?" he whispered, his lips close to Alan's ear.

Alan picked it up the hand and placed it on the other cheek. "It's more like… here."

Slowly, tenderly, Denny caressed his bottom. Alan groaned into it and let his hips respond. They kissed right there on the roof, in full view of all of Back Bay that might have cared to watch.

Alan had an inspiration. It was so simple, it was a wonder Denny hadn't thought of it. "Denny, what if I agreed to shoot you in exchange for Shirley?"

Denny pulled away and headed down the stairs to the bedroom. "No. And stop asking stupid questions," he barked over his shoulder. "Judas Priest, anyone would think you were the one with the mad cow." Denny stripped naked, pulled back the sheets on his side, and hopped in.

Fortunately for Alan's much beleaguered backside, they never made it to the candles that night.


End file.
